A blog about digital project management, interactive production and productivity from the team at Pixel Paddock, developers of Float Schedule.

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Tip: Taking effective meeting notes

Every meeting you attend should have three outputs: Notes, Actions and Backburner items. Nothing more.

Notes are important records to capture for future reference, Action imply there is a resulting action to take place following (each should have an action verb, e.g 'signoff', 'complete', 'send' and be accountable to one person). Backburner items are Actions that are important to the project, but don't need to be immediately actioned.

One addition to the Productivity arsenal this year has been the Behance Action Sheets. A pad of pre-printed sheets I take to every meeting. They break up your page into these three buckets, and include additional space for preparation and sketching.

Sure, you can build your own version of these Action Sheets, but I'm a sucker for great design, and these pads look the business.

Check them out here, they come in plenty of sizes and flavors to suit your style -